At present our country is immersed in an important process of change in business management, through which preserving everything and much positively achieved during the years of the Revolution, it is possible to achieve continuous improvement of said activity. In this sense, it would be well worth starting our comments by quoting the famous phrase of our Master José Martí “… the only thing that is constant in life is change”. This is dialectical.
In the same way, it would be appropriate to recall what was expressed by Niccolo Machiavelli in the year 1513 “… We must consider that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, of more doubtful success and more dangerous to handle, than starting a new order of things. The reformist has enemies in all those who benefit from the old order, and he has only lukewarm defenders in all those who would benefit from the new order, this lukewarmness resulting from the lack of credulity of humanity, which does not truly believe in anything. new until I have had actual experience of it. "
Some would like to see the results quickly, and even with exaggeration, I would say, forgetting or unaware that rapid changes are generally short-lived.
Unlike this way of thinking, changes are taking place in a gradual, wise, thoughtful and reasoned way, progressive, with a participatory and conscious character of the population, whose evolution and results are appreciated more slowly but which will finally give a great advantage, they will be more durable.
Like all change, it will generate attitudes and behaviors in people, as a result of which OPPOSITORS, TRADITIONALISTS, OPPORTUNISTS, SPECTATORS, NEUTRALS will emerge, categories that we are not going to describe but that will always be present - and it is necessary to know - not to support some and reject others, but to be able to carry out a better management of the change that finally leads us to achieve the proposed objectives.
The most appropriate management of change will require a Revolution in thought, and this will only be achieved with: EDUCATION, TRAINING, TRAINING, PARTICIPATION, DEDICATION; in short, with the creation of a culture, seen in a synthetic way in the set of ideas, attitudes, feelings, knowledge, traditions, that make up the ideology and performance of the company.
But we cannot forget that while education brings to consciousness the need for change and provides the means from which it can be carried out, it has to be understood and applied as a systematic and systemic process divorced from all formalism.
CHANGE AND COMPETITIVENESS
Competitiveness is today one of the outstanding characteristics within the business market of the entire world, for which the management methods should not be divorced or ignore the management styles and techniques that help us to be more competitive. It is important to have enough vision to envision the possible scenarios, which are highly changing, so that our organization can adapt, adjust and respond quickly to those changes, without forgetting the precepts associated with the change to which we have already made referenced above.
The issue of competitiveness will continue to be the cornerstone for the survival of companies in the years to come. Uncompetitive organizations have no future and cannot continue in the market beyond the next 2 to 3 years. This means that a natural selection is taking place in which only the most prepared will be able to survive.
The increasing competitiveness motivates that the changes are constant and they happen with more and more speed. Today's executive cannot wait for the stability of 20 years ago, he must necessarily live in change. Decisions made today may not work tomorrow, and in this context people's resistance to change is the great enemy of the company, which is forced to make whatever is necessary to adjust to new conditions, be competitive and survive, with no guarantee that more changes will emerge in the future to resolve the new competitive situations that arise.
The issue of resistance to change is the great negative force that opposes progress and endangers the future. In summary: Competitiveness, Continuous changes, Resistance to change, are the three elements that endanger the lives of Companies, and that all management personnel must know, master and work paying primary attention in order to manage them timely and adequately.
But these issues are not just for the leadership, as they are group conscience issues that must be faced by the entire working mass. The objective today is to improve and be more competitive; tomorrow, to be a Company of Excellence, so we must all unify our efforts to do so.
The change, under these conditions, may become so profound that it will go beyond the limits of a simple technical question. It will touch not only what our managers do but also what they are. Not just their sense of the task and how to tackle it, but their sense of themselves. Not only their way of seeing the world but their way of living in the world.
For this reason, the management has the obligation to provide elements, tools, information, through training actions, so that every worker can understand the situation and collaborate to achieve a common goal: the future. Managers have to become educational leaders, trainers, trainers of their employees.
Today, many leaders and executives think that business is done with numbers (such as the "balance sheet"), or forces (such as "market forces"), or even flesh and blood ("our people"). But that seen coldly, in isolation and without the necessary integration that it requires, could become a mistake. In the first place, and in general, businesses are made of ideas; ideas, expressed in words and actions. As Fidel expressed on the occasion of a speech delivered in the aula Magna of the Central University of Venezuela on February 3, 1999 “A revolution can only be the daughter of the culture of ideas”.
CHANGE AND HUMAN RESOURCES
Today's business world recognizes that the success of a Company depends on the way its human resources are treated, on how resistance to change is treated and on the way to motivate and integrate staff in a project that inspires. The management must create illusion, give confidence and motivate, create ideas and put them into practice.
The protagonists of change are the organizations themselves and these are made up of people, so the secret lies in the proper treatment of human resources.
At present, new organizational designs will always be necessary, a new philosophy, another way of managing organizations or configuring them, which allows and facilitates the integration of people in a dynamic of change as the way to be competitive and to survive. People are not, and cannot be, a passive subject of change; They are the instrument of change itself and depending on their activities, behaviors, habits, customs, beliefs, interests and emotions, they will be able to guide the Company more or less towards success.
Values change with the recognition of the person. Only the individual is capable of mastering existing technology and creating new techniques and, furthermore, generating the ideas that could revolutionize your Company.
The person is capable of conceiving ideas, making improvements, suggesting changes acting as a team. Thus, the idea of improvement groups, quality committees and quality circles is permeating in organizations, which, making a 180-turn compared to the beginning of the century, now place their success on the contributions and collaboration of workers.
People can plan, organize, cooperate, influencing their environment and their future. The first person interested in the Company moving forward is the worker, who is no longer a taxable person, who waits to "see what happens", to become an active person who discusses, promotes improvements, seeks to save time, costs and the improvement of quality as a way of survival and development.
CHANGE AND CUSTOMERS
But in all this change of values is implicit a cultural change, a development of mentality, a new learning and training for coordination, cooperation, teamwork, change of attitudes, motivations or perceptions.
The human factor today is the key, and the customer is the key to the business. Customer is one who repeats, is loyal, recommends those known for the satisfaction of the product and the treatment received.
But there is another concept of customer: the internal customer, that is, the person to whom we deliver our work and who "buys" in some way the elements or services that we offer. But what items do you buy, under what conditions, in what state? How is it treated, how are your expectations and needs understood?
It is unfair for a worker or a leader to carry the sad and unmotivating task of fixing things that were badly done by others; It is unfair that he spends his time (his life) reviewing, looking for and solving mistakes that he has not made that are the responsibility of his “inside salesman”. It should be considered that each person buys / transforms / sells, and thus the seller-customer chain is established within the Company.
A new concept of property is created: "I am a buyer, I do not want to accept work that is poorly done by others", "I have the right to do so". "My job is my own company and I cannot afford to waste time checking, controlling or fixing what another colleague gives me." (Everyone cannot allow themselves to do something that is not right!).
But for all the people in the Company to be integrated into these ideas, extensive training is necessary, at all levels, whereby every worker or manager knows and interprets the role that corresponds to him perfectly, in the appropriate way to achieve success.
New functions, new attitudes, new values are a change of culture in the Company that will take us into the next few years. Who does not understand and who does not put these ideas into practice has no future. Success lies, I repeat, in the new management of human resources, in the new training that prepares people for “knowing how to be” as well as for “knowing how to do”, the only method to involve them all in the illusion of this Common Project from which we will all benefit, including, of course, clients, integrated into a new management model thanks to which we all win.
As an important part of this process of change in business management is the necessary introduction and incorporation of new quality concepts, the design and application of quality management through ISO 9000 Standards, the use of self-assessment models for know the deficiencies of our management as a system, an effective way to project a plan for continuous improvement of business activity. This will be the fundamental objective of our next work, as well as the main results achieved in some companies.
